Justice Matters - tackling sexual violence

28 November 2016

Today's MOPAC public scrutiny meeting will be held today at City Hall 10.30am-12.30pm and will bring in the Metropolitan Police Service, criminal justice agencies and other key partners to discuss tackling sexual violence.

Tackling sexual violence

London is a diverse and tolerant city. But for all the positives, London still faces some enormous public safety challenges. Key areas such as Domestic Abuse, Rape, tackling perpetrators of violence against women and girls and Harmful Practices such as Female Genital Mutilation and Forced marriage are all themes the Mayor is adamant that he will make an impact upon. The Mayor’s is committed to building on learning and best practice through the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and will use the new Police and Crime plan to develop a better and stronger approach to tackling Violence Against Women and Girls.

According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales each year around 24,000 adults in London suffer serious sexual assaults, including rape. Of these, 85% are women and this is equivalent to 11 sexual assaults and rapes of women in each borough every week of the year. These figures disguise a marked difference between age groups. The rate of assaults for younger women 16-19 years old has been more than three times higher at 6.7% than the average for all women (2.2%).

Investigative work commissioned by MOPAC and NHS England has highlighted that survivors of sexual violence often are people with a range of vulnerabilities and, as a result, frequently experiencie multiple forms of abuse. Understandably these will be people with complex and multiple needs. Current provision is proving to be insufficient to tackle these complexities.

Firstly, Justice Matters will consider violence against women and girls from the perspective of a survivor navigating the criminal justice system, the points of attrition in the process and the support that the survivor needs or can expect. It will consider if the much publicised increase in reporting is due to increased confidence in the police; increased prevalence or or does it indicate a darker escalation in the severity of sexual violence being experienced by victims. In the second part of the event it will focus on the offender and how probation agencies work with sexual offenders and the challenges in ensuring compliance.